Introduction
Performance
poetry utilizing aspects of drama is a new idea in today’s world. In
fact, it is so new that finding previous studies on this topic was quite a
task. The previous studies I did find discussed performance poetry as the
art of reading a poem aloud. I reviewed one article in particular by
Susan Chambers titled, “Reading Poetry Wrong: Prosody and Performance,” in
which she supports this notion by focusing on how hearing a poem
"performed" or read aloud is necessary to fully comprehending the
beauty of it. Today, however, performance poetry is taking it a few steps
farther. Through this study I plan to expand upon the previous research
to show how one poet who practices performance poetry pushes the envelope and
helps performance poetry evolve by making her performance pieces more of a
theatrical production than a poetry reading.
Methods
To gather the data for my research, I first completed an
interview with a participant who I will refer to as S. S is currently an English professor at Kean
University. She was chosen for this
interview because she has been writing poetry for 53 years. She transitioned into performance poetry in
2007 and has composed two shows of performance poetry which she has performed
for many different audiences. She is
currently working to compose more pieces for a new show of performance poetry.
The interview took place on a Friday afternoon in S’s
office at Kean University. I could tell
that she took pride in her office because it was decorated with some of her
favorite things, including things from some of her performances. S felt very comfortable in her office and was
able to talk to me freely about performance poetry. The questions I asked S were based on her
experience with poetry. I wanted to gain
insight on performance poetry from someone who is very familiar with it. The interview lasted for twenty-two minutes
and forty-two seconds and was recorded on my iPhone so I could go back and
listen to it later.
The next step in the process of gathering data was to
transcribe the interview I conducted. I
then needed to pick out excerpts of the interview that were significant to my
topic. I used discourse analysis to
analyze these excerpts to show how they related to my focus.
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